Description
The state-sponsored countrywide transfer of land from Gaelic Irish and Old English Roman Catholics to New English, Old English and Gaelic Irish Protestants is at the heart of understanding early modern Ireland.
This volume provides a record of 3,140 claims to land and other property forfeited in the aftermath of the Irish war of 1689–91. Despite assurances that the confiscated estates of James II’s Irish adherents would be used to offset the cost of that war, during the 1690s William III granted vast tracts of lands to military commanders and personal favourites.
With a view to undoing the king’s largess, in 1700 the English parliament passed the Act of Resumption, which voided all but a handful of William’s grants and established a Board of Trustees to sell all forfeited estates. Crucially, the Act also prescribed that any person who asserted a title to a forfeited estate or property that predated William and Mary’s accession was entitled to submit a claim to the Trustees on or before 10 August 1700.
The Trustees established their headquarters in Chichester House on Dublin’s College Green in June 1700. The work of registering claims began immediately and by 10 August over 3,000 had been entered, an abbreviated list of which was quickly printed in order to facilitate the work of the Trustees. The Board’s ensuing adjudications were recorded in piecemeal fashion in manuscript across a number of the printed volumes.
With only a small number of these annotated lists still extant, the editors have collated all such decisions in order to provide, for the first time, a complete record of the claims and the Trustees’ rulings, including an additional forty-eight manuscript claims submitted after the August 1700 deadline,
